TEN RICH, POWERFUL CELEBRITIES WE WOULDN’T TRADE PLACES WITH

Celebrity has beaten the shit out of any other quality to which a person might aspire in our society. You get money, you get deference and you get to contaminate the most rarified and pristine portion of the gene pool with your seed or eggy-weggs. To calibrate your sensitivities, I l guarantee you that Puck from Real World IV is still getting laid left and right.
But, the significance of celebrity is best demonstrated by the story of Magic Johnson, who traced his contraction of the AIDS virus to a tragic occasion in which he was fucking seven women at once. Not only did the guy’s wife stay with him, he had a non-AIDS baby and is like five times healthier than I am. What the fuck? I can almost hear the little bastards upon entering his blood stream, Sorry Magic, we didn’t realize it was you. Gosh, I wish we could just jump back into that skank, but, oh man, we’re all huge fans. Showtime baby! Look, we’ll just keep the ruckus to a minimum and let you get on with things. Really, it’s an honor man, and if there’s anything we can do, like punk out a flu virus or something, just say the word.

The only missing piece of the Magic saga is for him to catch Cookie in bed with Michael Cooper and to beat them to death with an MVP trophy, leaving a gallon of his blood along with the world’s most starstruck virus all over the scene. Picked up by the police with one of Coop’s teeth stuck in his hair, Magic would be tried and acquitted within a month. Plus, since his wife isn’t white, no one would resent the acquittal very much. Some pretend that knowledge and virtue outweigh the shallow rewards of fame and wealth. Maybe it’s better to obtain a full understanding of Hegel’s Phenomenology than to catch HIV from fucking seven women at once, and then never get AIDS. Cough. Our money says that, were Hegel alive today, he’d be banging starry eyed coeds like Thorstein Veblen on ecstasy and Viagra.

Yet, with all of the privilege that celebrity affords, there are some very rich, very powerful people in entertainment with whom we would still not trade places. We’d rather work boring jobs, actually put effort into getting laid and spend less than half of our waking hours on drugs or alcohol than be…

10) Tom Cruise.
This was a tough one. This guy has been considered one of the most attractive men in the world for three decades, makes more money than a Columbian cartel with a direct line to Crawford, and his career is running as strong as ever: not bad for 5’6.” Plus, he’s hypothetically had sex with Nicole Kidman and Penelope Cruz, but his current definition of sex might require an airlock and a handjob from a Mulder impersonator so, like, partial credit. What could possibly outweigh all of that? It’s going to take some explanation.

First off, he’s been sucked into the vicious cult of Scientology. Now, I think all religion is crazy: Invisible men in the sky; chatty bushes; marriage… but real religions at least have a certain level of social acceptance and tradition that force us to tolerate them. Scientology is a money-sucking cult for narcissists and everyone instantly knows that you’re crazy because you base your life around the relatively recent hallucinations of a sub-standard sci-fi writer.

This is the root of Tom’s failings. According to my calculations, 1/8 (Nicole Kidman) > Katie Holmes. Tom’s pulling weaker tail because everyone knows he’s crazy and maybe definitely gay. Any woman who’s with him knows that she’ll be called a beard and that Tom will try and suck her into his cult and, should his sperm somehow reach her uterus via transfer from a man mouth/anus, she l eventually know the joy of having a seven-pound human explode out of her vagina without being able to complain about it vocally. Katie Holmes would never give us the time of day, day of month or month of year. We realize that; but everything is relative. If you are handsome, charming and the unquestioned master of global box office, you have to be a bit disappointed that you can’t do better than Katie, even if you are mostly interested in finding a woman whose eyes match your favorite shoes.

Second, Tom actually sent legal threats to our brothers in arms at The Buffalo Beast because they made a passing reference to him doing coke. As a Scientologist, Tom abstains from all mind altering drugs, recreational and, it should go without saying, those prescribed by someone with years of training in treating mental illness. So, Tom has managed to nullify all of the benefits of mega-stardom:

Premium ass: He does, okay here, but from his perspective the results must be disappointing.

Getting High: He could be wrecked on luxury drugs not even known to us 24/7 without any significant consequences, but chooses not to be.

Profligacy: He has enough money to do absolutely anything, but squanders the opportunity, choosing to toss word salad made from loony religious beliefs no more spiritually valid than shotgunning a George Lucas fart.

It boils down to this: the homeless guy who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart had everything Tom has and more. 1) Hotter girlfriend (the abductee and beard factors roughly cancel each other out) 2) Almost certainly, serious drug use. 3) Crazy religious beliefs that everybody else just laughs at. So, since we wouldn’t trade places with that nobody, we can’t justify a swap with Cruise.

9) Tommy Lee.
One could argue that this guy has got things pretty good. You can easily imagine him having a top-tier vagina impaled on every single pointy part of his body at 3pm on a Tuesday, but what it boils down to is that he’s just another over-the-hill rocker who embarrasses himself every time he opens his mouth and forces out some intolerable, whitewashed, youthful slang that you’d expect to hear from an excited teenager being interviewed after a Linkin Park concert. Tommy, you’re forty-something: by all means continue spreading as many dick-pathogens as you can into the canals of aspiring model/actresses, but be nonchalant about it, like Wilt Chamberlain was until he had nothing else to do but write comic books about his own dick. Aside from trying to be the dominant drummer front man of some Alzheimer-inducing, non-Crue bands, Tommy has spent the better part of the last decade attempting to stay youthful and significant even though the sunken pockets and harsh, cracked lines of his face are starting to look roughly like the midpoint of a time-lapse photo sequence of a decaying strawberry.

Enjoy the exquisite hedonism that you earned from your days of wearing suspenders with leather Speedos while tumbling around in a NASA-spec d drum kit, but shut the fuck up about it: nobody wants to think about you mumbling exhausted I love yous over Pam’s freshly spackled stomach anymore, if they ever did in the first place. Personally, I envy the fact that he got to wail on her a little more than the fornicating. Take that, most desired woman in the country! Gimme a time machine set to around or before Dr. Feelgood and I l happily make the swap. Otherwise, I’ll take my dignity, an adult haircut and immaculate bloodwork over a Quantum Lee-p.

8) Spike Lee.
I actually like many of Lee’s films, but the anger; the frequent touting of black sexual prowess; Lee’s worship of NBA stars; the fact that his entire body weighs less than my legs… do the math and I think you’ll come up with an answer not much higher than pi. I’m sure Michael Jordan has a huge cock and could kick my ass, but having common pigmentation with MJ does not, by racial transitive property, alter the fact that Spike could be slain by a particularly enraged Lhasa Apso.

Once promising and relevant, he is now pretty much a conspiracy theorist whose goal is to inflame racial divisiveness by lending credibility to ridiculous claims like the levees in New Orleans being exploded by the Dubyament in an effort to prove that black people really can swim. Really, how do you still support 40 acres and a mule when you e got 40 million and a Bentley? The angry eye on injustice has clouded up, leaving only whiny pettiness.

7) Donald Trump.
You know that perpetual face… it’s the hhhderrr face you make when somebody makes a lame crack about you that is undeserving of retort. The very fact that this dickhead vestige of Reagonomics continues to bore us with his charmless behavior well into the new millennium is quite disturbing. One of the pioneers of celebrity for boring, billionaire nobodies, Trump has winced his way into fame despite having the look of a Harkonnen from Dune and a sleepy personality that never fails to fail to captivate. He possesses a peculiar brand of dry arrogance that is buttressed by his transparent and pathetic desire to always have some surgically-sculpted-walking-vagina-fertility-goddess on his arm whose job it is to distract from the fact that his hairstylist and the roustabout who spins cotton candy onto a stick are one and the same.

Trump, spoiled by his years of fucking women way beyond his evolutionary mandate, has somehow even managed to raise his own daughter to become a brainless, vapid Miss Teen Fuckrag who will eventually ride the infantile genitalia of one of Daddy’s slightly younger peers through a carefree life of excess until she ends up emaciated from decades of cocaine and alcohol abuse and is forgotten in some remote darkened bedroom of a 30,000 sq. ft. mansion in the Hamptons. Trump has forced himself into the public eye at every opportunity, yet should be deliberately ignored like every attention whore who tries to command the spotlight despite having no admirable qualities whatsoever: that is, unless you think possession of a gold toilet is some sort of noteworthy accomplishment. You shit on precious metals, we get it, you’re rich. Now kindly appreciate your splendor without reminding everybody else that they are poor in comparison. When it comes to billionaires, I prefer the tycoons of old who would never think to seek the approval or envy of their inferiors. I’ll take power and fear over a crappy tagline parroted by a nation of dimwits any day… I was saying Boo-urns.

6) Jessica Simpson.
It’s not that she’s female: PMS and childbirth versus multiple orgasms and the accountability of a twelve year old boy strikes me as a fair trade. It’s not that she’s a bit slow: I’d happily trade 40 IQ points for superior looks, millions of dollars and a life of ease and luxury. Besides, so far I’ve really only learned one iron truism with my fancy, three-digit IQ, and that is: the more you know, the more you drink. No, the problem here is that Simpson is flat out retarded. I mean that literally. There’s saying, Brette Favre is gay, and there’s saying Richard Simmons is gay. There’s saying George Bush is a tard, and there’s saying Jessica Simpson is a tard.
For all the wealth and fame she acquires, and for all her beauty, I think Jess would be just as happy being kept in an upscale kennel. The champale wishes of this piece of Baptist trash represent the limits of what she can appreciate. If all but the most trivial advantages of her success are lost on her, what would be the advantage of being her? But what I wouldn’t give to trade places with her accountant. Once in Costa Rica, I’d be known only as blondie con dinero de silencio.

5) Sean Combs.
Sophisticated, dignified, refined: this is how one regards Spike Lee character in Malcolm X after witnessing the spectacle of Puff. DiP? Diddy? This dipshit can even decide on a mad phat/flandersesque permutation from a basic foundation of Puff Daddy. I P. Diddy No, I Puffy Hold on gonna drop just iddy on m. Around the bend: Zip Diddy Doo Dah. The fact that he began his career in the biz as a dancer is frightening, especially since I avoid dancing at all costs. This is simply because I fear ever looking like Puffy in one of his swaying, aquatic-vegetation-like fits that might inspire a Manatee D-Day if performed in Florida.

For all of his money, built on a sound foundation of adding “yeah, yeah” to stolen music and humping Biggie corpse until it surfaces in Beijing, Diddy still seems unable to find a maxillo-facial surgeon skilled enough to repair the ridiculous cow-catcher that erupts from his face like a Geiger Alien during its novelty coup-de-grace.

Despite his silly attempts at class, like having a guy in Highwater plaid pants follow him around with a parasol, The Loathsome Fonsworth Bentley, or replacing every fluid in his life with Cristal, the man (much like his companions in this list) is just another example of somebody so ridiculous and undeserving that even his sultanic wealth and his mountainous piles of beautiful, pulsing rap-booty would not be reward enough for me to abandon my punchclock, moderately-dignified schmo life, much less be afflicted with the appearance of Daffy Duck after getting a piano dropped on him.